Cancer fighter, pain reliever, maker of a less boring evening… It seemed that the only thing marijuana couldn’t do was make you smarter…

Hell, from what the Government and their slaves in Law Enforcement, marijuana actually makes you stupider. And for the most part, I thought it so- blaming my rampant marijuana use during the formative years for my inabilities to find a mole in chemistry, work out the Pythagorean theorem, or tell you what manner of creature a marsupial is.

But it turns out it probably had more to do with skipping school to shoplift in Ocala with Jon DeCarmine after we smoked the marijuana than it did the actual act of smoking the a fore mentioned marijuana… and some big brains form the University of California, San Diego are going to prove it.

Researchers scanned the brains of 92 adolescents, ages 16 to 20, before and after an 18-month period. During that year and a half, half of the teens -- who already had extensive alcohol and marijuana-use histories -- continued to use marijuana and alcohol in varying amounts. The other half abstained or kept consumption minimal, as they had throughout adolescence.

The before-and-after brain scans of the teens consuming typically five or more drinks at least twice a week showed reduced white matter brain tissue health, study co-author Susan Tapert, neuroscientist at University of California, San Diego, told HuffPost. This may mean declines in memory, attention, and decision-making into later adolescence and adulthood, she said.

However, the level of marijuana use -- up to nine times a week during the 18 months -- was not linked to a change in brain tissue health.

The researchers behind the study claim they are not sure just yet as to why there is such a disparity between the two’s effects or if the damage caused by alcohol is permanent, and acknowledge fully that these findings far from definitive- needing much more study and research. And it hasn’t taken long to find itself a naysayer…

The study (the finds of which in the April issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical Experimental Research) is in direct contradiction to a different study- coming out of Duke University- from earlier this year in which they discovered that routine marijuana use before the age of 18 is likely to cause long term drops in the user’s IQ. But it does show similar findings to a 2009 study (coincidentally done by this very group) which discovered that teens who consume alcohol scored lower on thinking and memory tests (with boys, it messed with their attention span; with girls, comprehension and interpreting visual information).

Enjoying the Halfling Leaf…

Again, nothing here is written in stone…

But it really goes with what damn near everyone I know who enjoys a taste of the sweet leaf knows precisely what this is referring to… And it is something the squares out there have been trying to sell in order to keep marijuana away from the mainstream.

And it’s simple…

Dope doesn’t make you a dope.

Sure, too much of anything isn’t a good thing for you and the same goes for pot, but think about it….

When society thinks of potheads, it doesn’t think of the millions (and millions) of successful and thriving members of society who enjoy a few tokes of the funky green the same way others enjoy a glass of wine or a few beers…

It thinks of Cheech & Chong.

It doesn’t think of the great thinkers like Carl Sagan and Joe Rogan or of the brilliant artists like anyone who ever recorded music in the past thirty or so years…

It thinks of bumbling fools who can barely phrase a sentence without peppering in a few “ums” and “errs”, let alone contribute positively to a society.

It’s how they sell their prohibitionist policy- through the fear of societal collapse that hangs over marijuana legalization like a dark cloud… an image of burned out Tommy Chongs dudeing their way through life, grinding to a halt any facet of American life not somehow linked to Taco Bell and Funyuns.

But that paradigm is changing… slowly, as more and more Americans see it as nothing more than bad, failed government policy based on primitive thinking.

The success (that is, if the Federalizes keep themselves out of it) of little experiment in Democracy that Colorado and Washington are currently undertaking with the legalization (and taxation and distribution like alcohol in Colorado) as well as study after study showing what everyone else has known for a whole now- that marijuana is no worse for you than alcohol and to continue to spend billions to fight it’s unending recreational usage by consenting adults is ridiculous- is going to affect how this country goes forward in regards to its current policy of total prohibition.

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Gay Marriage....

Is too important an issue for the Government to leave to the hands of the people... Should be a state's rights issue where the voice of the people will be heard... Isn't going to matter a hill of beans once the Chinese roll their tanks down the Pacific Coast Highway...